And so to Victoria, who was not always attired in black with the jowls of a Timothy Spall, as the young queen was a total hottie (Jenna Coleman) with dinner-plate eyes who appeared to have just emerged from the brow bar at Harvey Nichols (who knew?; also, at what age did she first look in the mirror and say, ‘Goodness, I believe I am developing the jowls of Timothy Spall. Lord Melbourne, help!’). But if you can buy Queen Victoria as a total hottie, and can buy her flirtation with Lord Melbourne, who is also a total hottie (Rufus Sewell), and can withstand all the total hotness that must have abounded in 1837, then Victoria is nicely watchable.

Jenna Coleman in Victoria. the young queen Is a total hottie with dinner-plate eyes who appeared to have just emerged from the brow bar at Harvey Nichols

Written and produced by Daisy Goodwin, this is very much Sunday-evening fare in the style of our old friend Julian Fellowes.

You could even say it was Downton Does Victoria, with its intrigues below stairs as well as upstairs.

The candles. The rats. The seamstress’s secret life. And also, all those Mrs Patmore-style misgivings about the future, as in: ‘The gas lamps are coming, the gas lamps are coming. Somebody, stop the gas lamps from coming!’

Victoria, here, even sounded like Lady Mary, and I half expected a Turk to be found dead in her bed and why not, as so much of history has been played with anyway.

That Lady Flora business, for example, did not happen at the time of Victoria’s coronation but some years afterwards.

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There is no evidence she was ever in love with Melbourne, her Prime Minister, although you can see why she was attracted here.

Indeed, the most compelling aspect in this whole production was his astonishing trousers, which gave him the male equivalent of ‘camel toe’.

Having put in some research – I am a journalist, don’t try it yourselves at home – I now know this is called ‘moose knuckle’ and he did seem to have sufficient ‘moose knuckle’ to turn not just a young girl’s head, but also an older woman’s head.

(My head was substantially turned; my eyes were also like dinner plates.)

Playing with the facts is fine. Dramatists do it all the time. But it is only fine if the audience feels an emotional or psychological truth is being explored – see Mrs Brown, which managed that beautifully.

It’s enjoyably soapy, in its spirited, Downton way, and I was fascinated to learn of Victoria’s bizarrely cosseted childhood – she always had to sleep next to her mother, and did you know she was never allowed to walk up or downstairs if unaccompanied by an adult? – but what were we meant to hold on to?

The look of it is rather flimsy. The frocks are glorious, admittedly, but all the jewellery could have come from Poundland – that coronation crown! – while the CGI was appalling.

Honestly, I’ve seen more convincing backdrops at no-mark theatres in the sticks.

Upstairs was fat with political intrigue, with Victoria’s uncle (Peter Firth) and her mother’s adviser (Paul Rhys) plotting against her; they were entertainingly wicked and would definitely have been twirling their moustaches, had they moustaches.

But, for now, it is a perfectly respectable Sunday-evening romp with the key words being ‘for now’.

Tonight it will have to compete against the return of Poldark. The gas lamps may well be coming but what about the pilchards? This is what we most wish to know.

Revisiting a classic is not always a misbegotten exercise – hello, Poldark – but the BBC’s decision to revive classic sitcoms with fresh casts for its landmark sitcom series is bewildering.

If you wish to celebrate the British sitcom, why not put the money into commissioning original pilots? Why remake Porridge and Keeping Up Appearances and Are You Being Served? (but not Mind Your Language, thankfully, or It Ain’t Half Hot Mum) as part of some tenuous ‘landmark’ event? What is the point? For those who remember these shows, they remember them, and for those who aren’t old enough, they must simply be perplexed.

Are You Being Served?, with its dolly bird and limp-wristed gay man and sexually frustrated older woman always going on about her ‘pussy’, was very much of its time, but if you wish to marvel at what passed for comedy then, the show already exists.